


Out of Darkness

by MadameEngineer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Crack, F/M, Genderbending, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:52:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5105342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameEngineer/pseuds/MadameEngineer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy and girl meet on a desert planet in the middle of nowhere of the outer rim. From there, the galaxy was the limit until it all came crashing down.</p><p>This is a gender swap version of the prequels and beyond, in which a few things are changed and we follow Annika Skywalker as she becomes a Jedi, falls in love, and is tempted by the dark side of the force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something Like Star Struck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A boy and girl meet, and this time there's no talk of angels.

The sand was foreign, and the smell wasn’t like anything encountered on Naboo, hopefully anyway. The young King wandered distantly behind the Jedi master Qui-gon Jinn. The Jedi was in the middle of negotiating with a particularly dubious seeming toydarian scrap dealer. The king thought it looked as if they were about to be bled dry, but he had faith in the Jedi. He had not led them astray yet, and was the only reason the King wasn’t in the prison camps set up by the trade federation.

In a way, the King wished he was back there. He felt so useless, stuck on this desert planet so far from home. Though it wasn’t as if there were much he could accomplish there, even with the help of two Jedi.

“Hmm, yeah. We got something like that. It’s in the back, let me show you.” Grumbles the Toydarian. Qui-gon casts a calm glance back at the king. 

“Stay here, we’ll be back in a moment.” And with that, he followed the hovering alien out a back door. He would have liked to go with him, but somebody had to make sure the gungan didn’t break anything. He was at the moment, examine several broken little utility droids, one of which blinked suddenly, zapped the Gungan’s outstretched hand and scampered off under a pile of junk.

The king stifled a smirk when suddenly he was startled by a voice that seemed to come from the air. “You’re not from this planet are you?”

The king cast his eyes around the room searching for the source of the voice and was startled when he found a wiry young girl hanging down off of a suspended speeder, looking at her curiously through worn looking goggles.

It took a moment for the king to collect himself before he asked, “What makes you say that?”

“You’re pale for one thing.” Says the girl lifting herself back up into a sitting position and adjusting something with a spanner. “Nobody who lives here is pale. Plus you aren’t covered in sand yet so you must have just got here.”

“Well you’re right. I’m new to this planet.” Replied the king.

The girl answered with a little chuckle. “Well I apologize in advance for your stay. It must have been a pretty bad situation if you had to crash land here.” She said matter of factly.

The king shot him with a perplexed look to which she shrugged. “I heard your friend talking to Watto. So where you from?”

Surely this girl couldn’t know about what was happening on Naboo, maybe she had never even heard of Naboo thought the king. Yet still he decided to answer with caution. “We’re from a small moon on the outer rim. We were heading for Coruscant when we had hyperdrive trouble.”

The girl lifted her goggles from her eyes and blew over the speeder sending dust and sand wafting up in a cloud as she jumped down from her perch. For the first time the king took a measure of the girl. She was shorter than he, yet seemed around the same age if not a little younger. Her hair was blonde and tied up for work, and she was certainly tan. On a desert world how could she not be after all?

The girl smiled at him before wandering over to walk could generously be called a reception desk and leapt up on it to take a seat. “Well I hope you can get what you need. Watto like to run a hard bargain.”

“Do you work here?” asked the King.

The girl gave a little scoff but understood that the boy meant nothing by it. “Since I was about three. He owns my mom and me.”

“You’re a slave?” asked the king a bit too bluntly.

The girl looked up from fiddling with her wrench and gave the king a serious look. “I’m Annika. Not just a slave.” She said broodingly.

The king shook his head and offered an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry I meant nothing by it. This place is still strange to me.”

This seemed to ease the mood and Annika seemed chipper once more. “They don’t have slaves where you come from? Must be nice.”

The king’s heart gave a little twinge as the thought of his people being rounded up and shoved into electrified cells flashed across his mind. “We didn’t use to anyway.”

Annika looked curious as to what he meant by that but the king offered no more deciding to change the subject. “So you fix things around here?”

“Yup.” She exclaimed proudly. “There’s not much in these piles of junk I haven’t worked on to be honest.” She looked at the droid the Gungan was in the process of chasing. “I got that one working just the other day, but I’ve been working on making my own protocol droid so it can help my mom. By the way I liked your astromech droid. We don’t get many of them in here.”

“That was R2.” Replied the king who was impressed, for some reason believing the girl at face value. “Your own protocol droid huh? Where are you getting the parts?”

Annika gave a quick glance to the back door. Distantly, they could hear the Jedi and Watto discussing the cost. Annika leaned closer to the king who leaned up to listen.

“I take some of the things Watto rights off as useless. Usually I can get something out of it.” She smiles before whispering, “Plus a few not so useless parts. Haven’t been caught yet.”

It seemed if the king knew anything about slavery that the risk this girl was taking was far from worth it. But Annika seemed proud enough of this accomplishment so he didn’t question it.

Annika went back to tinkering with a drive of some sort she had pulled from behind the desk. The king watched as her nimble fingers darted across the thing, surveying circuits and crossing wires and even giving the thing a few good blasts from her plasma torch. Seeing this cemented his belief that she was indeed building a droid all by yourself.

“You’re really good with that.” He offered. And it might have been the way the sunlight mixed with the light coat of sand on her face, but the king could have sworn he saw the tiniest bit of red flush across her cheeks, and for the first time that day, Annika stammered out her sentence hesitantly.

“T-thanks. I like fixing things.” She said a little awkwardly. Quickly she got back to her work. But the tiny smile beginning at the corners of her lips did not go unnoticed. 

The king was just about to begin more conversation, when Master Qui-gon appeared from the threshold looking more annoyed than he would have guessed a Jedi could look. Watto came flapping in a fair distance behind him looking pleased with himself. 

Before he could ask what had happened, Qui-Gon had stepped to her side and spoke in what was very clearly an order, “We’re leaving.” He looked off to the side to find the gungan messing about with yet more junk which he very well could have broken. “Jar jar.” He spoke authoritatively. He at once dropped the junk and rushed to join them as they began to make their way for the exit.

But before they left, the King turned back to Annika who was still fiddling with the device. He offered her a warm look before saying, “It was nice to meet you An…”

“Annika.” She replied. “Annika Skywalker.”

The king smiled. “Padem A…” quickly realizing he had almost given away his real name, he easily recoverd, “Naberrie.” And with that, he was out of the junk store and following quickly behind the Jedi.

\---

“Outlanders.” The Toydarian grunted in Huttese more to himself than to Annika. “They think just cause they’re from the core they can get their way whenever they want.”

Annika looked up from her work, biting her lower lip. “Core? You think they’re form the core?”

“Of course.” He spat in reply. “The man tried to pay with republic credits. No one form the outer rim has that kind of money.”

Annika considered this for a moment before returning to her work. “They seemed nice enough to me.” She muttered under her breath. “It’s nice to meet new people around here.” And it was true. If they were from the core planets, they had been the first she had ever seen. She didn’t really know what she had been expecting but it wasn’t that. With this, her thoughts turned to the boy, Padem. She had certainly never seen someone who looked like that. Tall, pale. The word was worming its way up her mind until it hit. Regal. Something about him had struck her as regal, which was something she had no experience with. But whether it was the way he held himself or the way he spoke, something about it was sticking with Annika.

But before she could think on this any further, Watto gave a little grunt of annoyance at her last remark. “Pull the core from that moisture unit and then you can go.”

About time, she thought to herself almost bemusing. In truth she enjoyed her work about as much as anyone could expect to on Tatooine. She had meant what she said about fixing things. But as she put on her goggles in preparation for the sand winds outside, and even as she made her way to the free standing moisture unit, her thoughts drifted so easily form what her hands were doing to wondering after that boy from the Core.


	2. A Girl From Tatooine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annika comes up with an idea to help the Jedi, and Qui-Gon begins to suspect that this girl from Tatooine is more than she appears. The race is on, and Annika is faced with the hardest decision of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah this was a long break between chapters. Gonna try to be faster.

“You’re a Jedi aren’t you?” Annika asked, knowing the answer already.

Jinn smiled, continuing with his meal. “What makes you ask that?”

“Not many normal people carry around lightsabers.” She mused. 

“Perhaps I killed a Jedi and took it for myself.” Jinn replied.

Annika pushed her plate away, eyes gleaming with excitement. “You don’t strike me as the murdering type. So you are aren’t you?” He nodded leaning back in his own chair. Annika meanwhile was brimming with excitement. Even on a planet like Tatooine, stories of the mystical knights were common and she’d heard them all. “That’s incredible. A Jedi in our house.” She said to her mother who was taking the news a lot more calmly.

“What brings you here?” Asked Shmi.

“Our ship was damaged as we left Naboo. We had to stop here in order to make repairs, but now it’s more a matter of parts.” He explained.

Annika was brimming with all the questions she had thought to ask of a Jedi, but now that one sat in front of her, she couldn’t remember any. “So that’s why you came to Watto’s. Well I guess you met some nice Tatooine hospitality. Could you get what you need anywhere else?”

“It doesn’t seem so. But I’m sure a solution will present itself.”

Annika’s eyes went wide with an idea. “I think it might. How much do you need?” she asked.

“More than we have.” Jinn said, amused at the girl’s enthusiasm. 

“I could help! See there’s this big race in a few days. I’m sure the winner’s pot would be more than enough.”

“Annika.” Shmi began but her daughter was too in the moment to listen.

“I have a pod. But I don’t have a sponsor. You could sponsor me and I could get you the money.” She finished.

Jinn seemed to consider this. “I’ve seen pod racing. Very fast, very dangerous. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Yes. As far as I know I’m the only human who can do it, and I’ve gotten a lot better since last year.”

“When you crashed.” Shmi pointed out.

“To be fair that wasn’t my fault.” Annika defended turning back to Jinn. “And I fixed the pod myself. With a few parts Watto wouldn’t miss.” She declared with pride. 

Shmi rose to her feet, collecting dishes. “Annika could you help me in the kitchen for a moment?”

“Sure.” She said, rising herself. “Just something to consider.” She said to Jinn before leaving. 

Once in the kitchen and out of earshot, her mother began. “You shouldn’t get their hopes up like that.”

“Just throwing out ideas. I don’t think he’ll actually go for it.”

“But you do still plan on entering the race with or without him.” Shmi stated more than questioned. Annika shrugged and Shmi let out a sigh. “Annika you know how much I hate those awful races. Every time I worry you won’t come back.”

“But I always do.” Annika replied confidently. “And this time it could be to help a Jedi.”

“You’d risk your life that way?” Shmi asked. “Annie you don’t even know those people.”

“And you’re than one who says this galaxy would be a better place if more people were willing to help strangers.” Annika retorted, washing the dishes haphazardly. “Mom helping them could be the best and only thing I do that ever matters.”

Shmi knew that her daughter could not be persuaded from helping someone, especially a Jedi. So she sighed in resignation approaching her daughter and brushing her hair from her face.

“I know. Just promise me you’ll at least try to be safe.”

Annika smiled. “I will mom. And thanks.”

\---

Qui-Gon observed the girl the whole night. For since the moment he had met her, something resonated around her in a way he had never seen before. At first he thought his senses were wrong, but the more he watched her, the more he began to see why. She would turn to someone the instant before they began to speak. Her walk was light and sure as if she was ready at any moment to leap into some form of action. She’d turn to meet someone before they entered the room as if she knew they were coming, and as her mother dropped a dish, she caught it so reflexively without even looking as if running on instinct with a hint of foresight. He believed her then about her skill with a podracer. Because as the night drew on, he became sure that she was strong in the force. Very strong, perhaps the most he had ever seen. He reflexes seemed faster than some trained padawans.

And so at the nearest opportunity, she found her way into a long conversation with him. He answered a myriad of questions. How many Jedi were there, where did they come from, how many planets he had seen.

“Several. But not nearly even a quarter. There’s thousands of systems up there.” They both looked up to the sky, and he saw the wonder, and hope in her eyes.  
“I must sound so naïve.” She said more to herself than the Jedi. “I’ve never even been off this one. So it’s hard to imagine. I’d like to visit them all.”

“Maybe one day you can.” Jinn responded.

Annika laughed. “I’m just a servant mechanic. It’s nice to hope but I don’t think I’m ever getting off this rock.”

“Never be so sure. The force works in mysterious ways.”

“The force?” Annika asked leaning against the wall of the balcony. 

“Yes. It surrounds us all, and though it, much is possible. And you’re more attuned to it than I think you realize.”

Annika seemed to consider this. “Do you really think so?”

“You sense things before they happen. You’re mechanical skill stems from an intuition with the way things work, but it goes so much further than machines.”

Annika listened, and Qui-Gon saw in her eyes a girl who had watched her hopes dashed too many times before. He could tell she wanted to believe him but could only approach with fascinated caution.

As he finished, she moved to sit with him on the balcony. “Are you saying, I could be a Jedi?”

“Would you want to be?”

She smiled. “More than anything…” she said dreamily, looking up at the starry sky once more. He could watch as she lost herself in the vision of that life, the twinkling of a thousand stars in her eyes.

But then her gaze fell back to the earth, as she looked back into the house to catch a smile form her mother, busy tidying up the kitchen. With this, Annika let out a sigh and stood to her feet. “I’d like to think so. More than anything I want to help people. People like us. But I’m just a girl from Tatooine.”

She placed a hand on the archway as she moved back into the house, but turned back to the Jedi and smiled. “But thanks. For thinking I have the chance. That’s more than most people have ever done.” 

And with that, she disappeared back into the house. Qui-Gon withdrew his communicator to contact his padawan.

“Master?” his voice crackled from the speaker.

Jinn sent him the scan of the girl’s blood he had taken with the excuse of a checkup. “I’m uploading a blood sample for you now. Use the ships scanners to analyze it.”

A few seconds later, Obi-Wan’s voice crackled out again. “Master it’s incredible. I’ve never seen this many in a sample so small. Not even from master Yoda. Whose blood is this?”

“A girl whose helping us get what we need.” Jinn responded considering the information. He had suspected, and this confirmed it.

“Master what does this mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

\---

“Wow.” Exclaimed Annika in wide eyed surprise a day later. The Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn had just agreed with what had been an off handed suggestion. “Are… are you sure about this?”

The Jedi master answered with a measured nod. The boy however, Padem looked less sure about the whole enterprise. “A minute ago you seemed fairly confident you could win.”

“I can.” Defended Annika. “I mean I will. It’s just that seems like a pretty drastic move on your point.”

“Drastic choices are all we have left. And from what I’ve seen of you, I have every faith that you will win.” Answered Qui-Gon.

Annika considered this for a moment, twiddling a spanner between her fingers, a tick she had developed whenever she was thinking. “Even as far as drastic goes, you might be better off stealing someone else’s ship.”

Padem smiled at this and gave a nod in agreement. Qui-Gon looked amused but shook his head. “No need. Right?”

Annika slid the spanner into her pocket and proudly declared, “Not only will I win, but you could stand to make a killing if you somehow got someone to bet for you. I hear the odds against me are 40 to 1.” At least that’s what it had been this morning when she had checked. By the time she was out on the race track, it’d probably go even further against her. A human in a podrace was an impossible proposition. 

“I don’t have much experience with gambling, but something tells me that the roll will be in our favor.” Said Qui-Gon, his meaning lost on both the young king and the mechanic.

Annika laughed. “Well for starters, this is what you’d call going all in.”

\---

The roaring engine of Sebulba’s podracer smashed into the broadside of Annika’s, sending her entire pod careening off to the right. It took everything she had to correct her course and not smash into the pillars of stone at 600 kilometers per hour. Just as she had somewhat leveled off, another strike sent a jolt through her bones, but this time, Sebulba was going to fully ram her off the course, but more importantly to her death.

The turbine’s of both machine’s were deafening. The left side of Annika’s vision was completely cut off by the enormity that was Sebulba’s engine pods. There was no way she could out power him. Her only chance was to outrun him, and let him slide off and go crashing off himself. But the entire race her pod hadn’t been able to reach the speeds she knew it could. Something was wrong, and if she couldn’t find out what, she was dead.

Her eyes flicked from her systems checkup which she had been running nearly the whole race. It had come back clean. There was nothing wrong with her pod that the sensors could detect. So ruling that out she thought, what was there? Annika knew every circuit and cable of this machine, and knew that there weren’t as many internal sensory systems as there safely should be. It was a machine of extremes. Everything had been optimized for speed and handling. Nothing else mattered. As such, there was nothing in the fuel pods themselves to report their condition. But if something was wrong with that fuel injector’s she would have exploded two laps ago. Same went for anything in the combustion chamber. Both cables were fine and the anti turbulence vanes had already been fixed, which only left her with the primary intake turbines.

But that was out too, thought Annika. She had checked them around six times a day, and cleaned them regularly. And yesterday when she had fired it all up, they had preformed exactly as intended. But if they were clogged, or the motors weren’t running right, both engine blocks would have to compensate, and the whole pod would be slower. It was the only option.

Now she was face with a new problem. What could she do about it? Sebulba continued to smash his rig again and again into hers, and all the while she was being shoved closer and closer to the myriad of stone archways or canyon walls that would flatten her in less than a second.

It suddenly dawned on her what she could do. It may not fix the engine, and it was set her back. But if nothing else she wouldn’t be crushed. And so just before she was rammed into a cluster of collapsed boulders, she pulled back on the throttle with all of her might, bringing her pod to a dead stop. Sebublba careened off to the side at such an angle that his pod was going backwards on the track before he could adjust.

For the briefest of seconds Annika considered doing the maintenance check herself and getting out of the pod. But then she’d be hopelessly behind. So the only thing to do was entirely risky and would probably slice the turbines and by extension everything up the second she tried but there was nothing left to do.

And so she cracked her knuckles, and pressed back down on the throttle, flooring it. Her body was smashed against her seat as she went from 0 to 700 in a second. And in that time, a horrible rat tat tat sounded form the engines, and Annika figured she was about to blow up. But instead there was a puff of black smoke from the right turbine, then a jagged piece of metal was shot forth but left immediately in the dust. Someone had tried to sabotage her and it wasn’t a hard guess as to who.

It only took a few seconds to catch up to Sebulba who was shooting along at a slower pace as he must have been confident in his victory. Due to this, he didn’t look to happy to see Annika pull up beside him to the right. She offered him a mocking wave enraging him into an attack. The weight of his pod shifted to the left as he drew back for the sideswipe, and Annika’s eyes fixed on his hands.

The second she saw the muscles in them shift, she once again pushed the throttle to the max. Sebulba’s pod charged right, and would have crushed her entirely if she hadn’t shot forward just in time, sending the alien champion to smash his pod against a cluster of rocks just a few seconds before Annika crossed the finish line for the third and final time.

She sped along for a few hundred more meters before her pod chugged to its stop. Her hands were numb, and she couldn’t tell if her eyes were twitching from fatigue or excitement.

She allowed herself to sit for a few moments before turning off the Pod, and when she did, she couldn’t even tell if the engines stopped making noise, because their whirring thrum was replaced immediately by the roar and cheers of ten thousand spectators. She barely had time to get to her wobbling legs before she found herself whisked form the cockpit and wrapped up in the throngs of fans who had rushed her, supporting her and rising her into the air, chanting her name. And it was only then that the weight of it hit her. She had won. Her arms were too exhausted to raise, her legs too tired to move but that didn’t matter because she was being carried out into the middle of the track so all could admire her and none of it registered… because she had won.

Pride was choking out all other feelings, so it was a surprise to her when she noticed the people closest to her. The Jedi Master Qui-gon was at her side, a deep looking smile that met his eyes crossed his face. The annoying fish guy was whooping and hollering her name, and C-3PO was getting crushed by the crowd. Finally, there was that boy again, and for once the somber look was gone from his face. And he looked much better when he smiled.

\---

A few hours later, she had finally been left alone in the hangar. She was spending the last few moments she had with her pod. She had decided to sell it after this race, as the extra money couldn’t hurt to give her mother. But it was still a hard thing to move on from. Most of her fondest memories were the afternoons spent working on it, doting over every nut and bolt. She didn’t even have a chance to give it a name she mused. All ships should have them. 

She ran her hand along the worn and torn accelerators. Then the engines. To finally give one last look at the cockpit before it would be hauled away. It was the best end run she could have hoped for.

“Alright Kinak. Take it away.” She breathed. The alien mechanic looked at her with a grin.

“If you want I could give you two another minute alone.” He laughed.

“No, no. If you stay I’ll start crying and nobody wants to see that. Just take care of her okay?”

The alien gave a brisk nod and signaled for his speeder to start moving. Annika watched it all the way from the hanger, around the corner and out of sight.

She didn’t have long to lament its departure as boot steps sounded off behind her. She turned to see it was the Jedi and at his side was Padem. 

She sniffed and hoped that her eyes weren’t beginning to well up with tears. “Sorry.” She breathed. “I just hate to see her go.”

“You wouldn’t be a very good mechanic if you didn’t.” He said, holding out a bag that looked very heavy. “Your winnings. Sorry it couldn’t be more.”

She took the bag and stared at what was more money than she had ever seen. “Thank you Qui-Gon.” She beamed. “This will really help us out for the next… I don’t know how long. It’s just amazing.” She was still on her victory high, and she couldn’t wait to see her mother’s face when she showed her.

The look Padem and Jinn exchanged when unnoticed by her, and the Jedi bent down to his knee to be more on her level as he was quite tall. He placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled as warmly as he could. “Annika, do you remember what we discussed last night?” Annika nodded. She hadn’t forgotten, even in the heat of the race, it had been festering at the back of her mind. A hope to impossible to believe in. “Do you still wish to become a Jedi?”

Her voice caught in her throat. “Yes. More than anything. Why?” she couldn’t allow herself to even dream of what he said next.

“Because I made a deal with Watto. If you won the race, he promised to give you your freedom.”

Annika’s knuckles went white as the bag slipped from her hand. Her heart may have even skipped a beat. She couldn’t even comprehend the words. Freedom. Free. Her eyes were filled with tears and longing as she looked at the Jedi Master, almost begging, to ask if it was true. He nodded, and found himself wrapped in the embrace of the teenage mechanic. She’d fallen to her knees, wracked with a mixture of laughing and sobbing, so beyond any joy she had ever felt in her life that even the victory of the race couldn’t compare.

And it all lasted as long as it could. Because it didn’t take long for her to think on every word he had spoken, and noticed the words he had not said. She pulled away from him, collecting herself, and dreading the answer to the question she was about to ask.

“But what about my mom?”

\---

Annika stood at the door to her home, unable to find the will to knock. Suddenly she was looking at things as if for the first time. And even this hut of a home was laced with an aura of nostalgia. She looked to Qui-Gon who stood at her side, and somehow gave her the strength to cross that threshold one last time.

Her mother was sitting at her chair, in sight of the entrance. Immediately she was on her feet, probably to check if her daughter was missing was missing anything from the race. At this expected show of motherly affection, Annika couldn’t help but smile. Unable to start with the truth, she held up her winnings.

The smile she received from her mother almost broke Annika’s heart right then and there yet still she tried to keep her face joyous and Qui-Gon noted how resolved she seemed to not betray her feelings.

“Oh Annie. That’s wonderful.” Her mother beamed. “And you’re safe? No injuries this time?”

She shook her head, unable to say anything. And now her mother could tell something was wrong. “Annie what is it? You should be happy.”

And with that, she broke, falling into her mother’s arms, clinging to her tightly, needing her mother who looked from her to the Jedi.

“The race won her freedom.” He explained, a somber note in his voice. Shmi let out a breath, both shocked and amazed clasping a hand to her mouth in elation for her daughter.

But Qui-Gon continued. “I tried to secure it for you as well. But Watto wouldn’t have it.”

Shmi did not miss a beat, as she immediately understood. She nodded to the master and wrapped her arms around her daughter, cool serene. Her smile remained, as she remained strong. Annie needed that more than anything now. 

“I… c-can’t.” she croaked through shaky breaths. “I can’t leave you alone here.”

Shmi stroked her daughters hair, and when she spoke, it was with conviction. “You must. Your life must be better than this.” She said, gesturing to the world around her. “You can’t stay here on my account Annie. I will survive.”

Tears were running down Annika’s cheeks. “How can I just leave?”

“Because you must forge your own path. You cannot look back. This place holds nothing for you. You’re meant to go, I know it. There’s so much I know you can achieve. But not here.”

For a long while, Annika remained like this. But finally her hold loosened as she leaned away to look at Shmi in the eye. “I’m scared for you.”

“I know. Bur my place is here. My future is here. It is time for you to let go…to let go of me. I cannot go with you. And you cannot live with fear of the past. You have to look ahead. You have to be brave for me. And you have to go.”

Annika spent the next hour with her mother. Making it last as long as possible. And she savored every moment. 

Qui-Gon waited, and knew that proper time must be given. He had told them that they need to leave as soon as possible to which Shmi agreed. He left them alone to allow them privacy. And at the end of the hour, he watched as both stepped from their home. Annika with a pack slung across her back with most everything she held dear. The once bright girl looked almost mournful and Jinn understood. He remembered when he left his family, and he had seen it enough times since then. 

The two exchanged their final goodbyes, as Shmi kissed her daughter on the forhead. Annika turned slowly to move to Qui-Gon, and only got halfway before dropping her bag, returning to hug her mother one last time. “These are your first steps Annie. You can’t look back.” She whispered.

Annika nodded, and let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important! Okay so in this I'm still using the Midi Chlorians but don't hate because in my head cannon, they just appear in the blood of force sensitive individuals and are more attracted to those who are strong in it. They are not the source, they are just a side effect.


End file.
